[Qt-creator] Using flickable in QTCreator Designer

[Tobias Wahlstrom]

Hi,

How do I get a stack trace from Quick Designer? I have been using the 
precompiled version of Quick Designer in my tests. Can I get a stack trace 
out of this version or do I have to build my own?

I have some more feedback on Quick Designer. I understand that you havn't 
had the time to add all fancy features one could ever wish for yet - but I 
still would like to mention the things that I think is most important. We 
are hoping to be able to use this tool for both our design team and our 
UI-developer team letting the both teams take care of different aspects. 
To me it seems like that UI-developer team will be pleased with the nice 
text-editor with auto-completion and context help and everything. 

The part that needs most improvements if you ask me is the visual editor. 
At least our UI-designers do not like to edit "magic code" so much and I 
think that this applies to most UI-designers. The things below are 
comments as seen out of a UI-designer perspective...

One thing I really like is that qml-files I create in the project folder 
that appear among the Items in the Library using the visual qml-editor. I 
would like to be able to arrange my qml-documents in folders. This folder 
structure should be used in the Library view to make it easier to handle 
many qml-documents. You may use the filter but I still think that 
organising the documents by some topic add a value and usability.

I created a qml-document "NumberBox.qml" with a few custom string 
properties. Then I choose to use these properties as a text value and a 
color value for my NumberBox. I found out how this is done in the visual 
editor - very nice! Even though the properties was defined in the document 
the text "disappeared" in the editor area. If I run the project it appear 
as the should do but not in the editor and not in the state preview.

Then I added a few NumberBox:es using drag-n-drop to my main document and 
wanted to change the header text and the color for each box. But I could 
not find a way to set the property values for my NumberBoxes using the 
visual editor. It would be pretty neat if my custom properties appeared in 
the Advanced tab so that I can change the header and color for my 
NumberBoxes within the visual editor.

And finally it is a bit cumbersome that the library in the visual editor 
never update its list of Qml Components if I add a new one. If I edit a 
qml component (in my case the NumberBox) and go back to my main view I 
would like that all instances of the NumberBox should update - but they 
don't. I have to close the document in the text-editor and then open it 
again to force the library to reload.

Keep up the good work,
/Tobias




From:   <kai.koehne at nokia.com>
To:     <qt-creator at trolltech.com>
Date:   2010-03-18 13:59
Subject:        Re: [Qt-creator] Using flickable in QTCreator Designer
Sent by:        qt-creator-bounces at trolltech.com



Hi Tobias,
 
> I have been looking at the version of QtCreator passed along with the 
Qt4 
> technical preview. 
> 
> First - very good work. I like the automatic snap-functions very much! 
It 
> looks good and the overall impressions is that it is fluid and nice to 
> work with. The context help for QML-documents are very good!

good to hear :)
 
> I still miss a few things in the visual editor for QML-documents. Is 
there 
> a roadmap that describe what to expect?

No, we don't have an official roadmap about individual features.

> For me it is very important that the visual editor is good so that our 
> design team can do and try as much as possible without having to deal 
with 
> QML-code. I would prefer if using lists, flickable, flipable etc would 
be 
> a part of the visual editor. Dealing with (at least simple) transitions 
> (animations) between states and different pages in the visual editor 
would 
> also be very nice. 

I agree. Especially the support for visual editing of transitions 
is a feature I'd _love_ to have in the Quick Designer, but I'm afraid it 
won't
make it for QtCreator 2.0.

> To me it only seems like one can nest things into rectangles and items. 
I 
> have tried to nest things into flickable and flipable using the visual 
> editor without any success. 

In the Quick item set all items can have 'children'. Anyhow, we restrict 
this
in the visual editor for some elements - most of the time you don't want 
that
e.g. a Text element is a container, and allowing this in the visual editor
makes reparenting there pretty unusable.

Anyhow, that Flickable isn't a container is probably 
just an oversight. Flipable is somewhat special in that it has the front 
and row
properties, and when reparenting something you most certainly want to add 
the new
child to either front or back, not the generic "children" property ... I'm 
not
sure if we can support this element properly for 2.0 though.

> If I manually edit the QML and put things into 
> a flickable the things is no longer shown in the navigator pane. 
> The state 
> pane show the content considering clipping etc. The visual editor pane 
> show the children of the flickable without considering clipping.

That's clearly a bug. I'll look into it.

> I can 
> edit the children even though they not appear in the navigator pane.
> I can't find anything related to transitions or animations.
> 
> If I manually edit the QML-document and switch back to the visual editor 

> QTCreator die.

Incidentally I was just investigating a crash in the Flickable element 
that might be related:

http://bugreports.qt.nokia.com/browse/QTBUG-9161

Anyhow, a stack trace would be great :)

> It seems to me that the current version of the QTCreator only provide 
> editing capabilities of static layouts. The ability to add more advanced 

> objects (like flickable) have no practical use. Is this the level of 
> implementation that is intended for the next release of Qt?

Well ... the first version of Quick Designer coming with Qt Creator 2.0 
won't 
be 'feature complete' in the sense that you never have to switch to the 
text editor - the most 
obvious thing is the missing support for editing transitions you 
mentioned. 
But it will IMO be useful nevertheless, and with the tight integration to 
the text editor 
you should be able to do stuff in text that isn't supported in the Quick 
Designer yet. Anyhow,
I'm sure it will get a lot more powerful over time.

Tanks a lot for your detailed feedback! I'm really appreciating it.

Regards

Kai Koehne

who tries to spread the usage of "Quick Designer", to avoid confusion with 
Qt Designer.
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